Consumer purchasing behavior may be influenced at different times in the purchase-consume-purchase cycle. For example, some grocery stores, in an attempt to influence future purchases, employ video screens located at checkout stations to display advertisements and offer coupons based on the items being purchased by a particular consumer. This type of system has not been entirely successful because the time of the advertisement's maximum influence on the consumer, i.e., during checkout, is temporally furthest from the time that the consumer can conveniently respond to the coupon or information. Because the individual consumer has just completed his purchases, it may be a relatively long time before he is in the store again.
Television advertisements, newspaper coupons and feature advertisements also influence the consumer during the middle of the purchase-consume-purchase cycle. Again, the effectiveness of these promotions varies with the time between the consumer's receipt of the promotional information and his next shopping trip.
In-store displays are more effective in influencing consumer purchases because they are encountered more or less contemporaneously with the actual item selection process. One type of in-store display, i.e., a point-of-purchase (POP) display, is generally physically a fixed display that promotes a single product or group of products and must be changed from time to time by store personnel, a time consuming and costly task.
Another type of in-store advertisement is the fixed paper placard attached to the front of shopping carts. As with POP displays, the placards must be changed periodically. Effectiveness of the placards is also limited, because they are quickly obscured by groceries as the cart is filled.
It is therefore an aspect of the invention to provide an advertising system that optimizes the effect of product advertisements by presenting the information just before the consumer is ready to make a purchase and that overcomes the limitations of known in-store promotions.